Vates

Introduce your business and what you do there

I am the CEO of a technology company specialized in software development for the mining industry.

What challenges were you trying to address with Vates?

We needed help with software architecture and an API integration.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They did the architecture, design, development, and implementation of our core I-GAT system. Recently, we also worked with them on an update of that same architecture to make it more secure for certification.

What is the team composition?

In the first project, we worked with an engineering manager, a lead architect, two developers I think, a project manager, and a commercial manager. It was the same for the update, except we only had one developer.

How did you come to work with Vates? 

At the time we were a startup and didn’t have enough experience to carry on that project, so we had a licitation. Vates met our budget needs, had great architects, and they made a great proposal.

Additionally, they had great experience in business software architecture and a great portfolio. They also had several developers available, which made us feel that we could have everything covered no matter what. We chose to work with them from there.

How much have you invested in them?

 We spent about $35,000 on both projects.

 What is the status of this engagement?

Our first project started in June 2015, and it lasted about 6 months. The recent update started in January 2021, and our work is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The architecture operates in 14 different mining sites, and it has a high volume of transactions. It also has a very good performance. The architecture was very well designed and successfully implemented on the cloud. Overall, the project was very effective and well-executed.

How did Vates  perform from a project management standpoint?

We used Jira for project management, and it worked very well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The number of developers and diversity of profiles stand out. Basically, they can do whatever you need. The team has expert architects, QAs, web developers, and AI developers. They always have the right person for anything that you can think of.

They were also very good at estimating the time and budget needs of the project; their initial approximation ended up being very close to the final results.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We had to wait for some time before they had the availability to work on our project because they are usually very busy. Otherwise, we are very happy with their work.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They’re a good choice if you want your product to be high quality and scalable.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and co-founder of Nobracks. We produce and sell orthodontic products.

What challenge were you trying to address with Vates?

We use a lot of technology, and that’s the reason we hired Vates. Every orthodontist has a lot of patients. We needed a comprehensive solution within one platform.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed a platform to organize our company’s production. The platform introduces our treatments to patients. Then, our orthodontists can follow the treatment plan and receive payment for the treatments.

What is the team composition?

We spoke with 5¬–10 people.

How did you come to work with Vates?

Vates was a very serious and interesting company. They were able to resolve our problem at a good price and within the time we wanted.

How much have you invested with them?

My company spent $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from February–December 2020.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Vates developed a very nice platform. We were happy that we chose them, and we were pleased with the software that they developed. 

We’re able to track our production and work in an easier way. We feel we’ve achieved our goals.

How did Vates perform from a project management standpoint?

All of our meetings were via video or telephone calls because of COVID-19. We also used email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re a very serious company. We are going to do another project with them because we’re happy with their work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s difficult to know if we’d change something. It’s not easy to do software specific to certain activities.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If possible, I recommend having in-person meetings. It’s better than interactive meetings, but that wasn’t an option last year. The relationship is very important.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a mechanical engineer, and I’m the president of our company. Our primary product line is defense-oriented sensors, but we also have an agricultural-sensing device. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Vates?

Vates worked on the Python code for our agricultural-sensing device. We had to upgrade from Python 2.7, which ran on AWS, to a higher version.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Vates took all of our existing lambda functions and converted the old code into the new one. They also did some testing on their servers. They deployed the code to their development environment, and from there, we ferreted out and fixed the issues. We then released it to our actual user-facing site. 

What is the team composition?

They have a large crew, but I mainly work with Rolando (Senior Software Developer & Engineer), Christian (Engineering Manager), and Carina (QA Analyst). 

How did you come to work with Vates?

A person I had known from my previous work had a list of different companies that might be good for the project. They were all overseas. I basically interviewed all of them, and I thought Vates was the best fit. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested between $10,000–$12,000 so far. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in August 2020, and we’re still engaged. The bulk of the work is done, but I’m keeping them around for maintenance. 

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Vates has been amazing. The work they do causes no interruptions or delays on anything. The users didn’t experience any of those. I’ve done some in-house testing as well, and we’ve resolved the issues that showed up. We have a seasonal product, and we don’t think there will be any issues next season. The device should be good to go. 

How did Vates perform from a project management standpoint?

Vates has been excellent and is always ahead of me when it comes to delivering on time. They have a full plan and layout of the path that they want to use. They coach me through every part of it, and they have all of the bases covered. 

We communicate via email, and they prepare some PowerPoint presentations for us to follow along. I don’t use any project management software with them, but they may be using one on their end. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their efficiency and knowledge of the subject are impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there are none. As far as my needs are concerned, the team gave me more than I needed. I was initially hesitant about working with someone outside of the US because I’d never done that before. We’d never used engineers and software developers that weren’t US-based. However, I no longer have any fears of that, since it has been very easy to work with Vates. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Know your priorities and all the things you want to achieve in your project, and then turn Vates loose on it.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of SocialCrew, a digital marketing startup based in Argentina. We offer lead generation, SEM, growth marketing, customer research, and UI/UX design. We provide custom marketing software to customers.

What challenge were you trying to address with Vates?

We were looking to get more B2B clients, and we wanted to develop software for this purpose. The pandemic was affecting our business, so we needed to come up with a solution quickly.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Vates developed software with AI and big data components. It’s aimed to improve our clients’ business strategy and lead generation. They learned what our needs were and made some suggestions for the software.

What is the team composition?

We worked with 4–5 developers and a project manager from Vates.

How did you come to work with Vates?

They’re a well-known company in our market. We evaluated 3–4 other candidates, and we chose Vates because they were a large company with many years in the market.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested $40,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project ran between February–August 2020. We don’t have ongoing work at the moment, but we’ll go back to Vates when we do.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We’re very happy with the project, and we’ll do more work like this in 2021.

How did Vates perform from a project management standpoint?

They responded quickly to our messages, and they delivered on time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have a lot of experience with development processes like scrum, and they have an agile mentality.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. We gave them our idea, and they materialized it.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Vates is a professional team, and they have very good prices for the level of talent in their team. They’re quite accessible to startups.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are one of the biggest semiconductor chip manufacturer in the world. The company has more than 100K employees. I'm IoT solution architect.

For what projects/services did your company hire Vates?

As part of our IoT enabling program, we hire Vates to help us in the development of end to end IoT solutions to shows case our products and integrate with 3rd parties in the solutions sold thru our SIs.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goal was to support our SIs with engineering activities during the integration of they products with our HW. Help them in the ramp up and development of the solution and support them once the solution is in production.

How did you select this vendor?

We selected them thru a rigorous process the company has. We presented our needs to many vendors and then selected Vates based on the offering.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They design and develop the solutions based in the requirements and architectures defined by us. They provided level one support for our partners and customers.

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

This project enabled our SIs ecosystem. allowing them to quickly ramp up in our HW and SW products accelerating TTM and addoption.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I handle business development at Vulcano, a company dedicated to selling water treatment products—specifically, pumps and filters for the swimming pool industry.

For what projects/services did your company hire Vates?

We hired Vates to educate us on the more innovative technologies of the 21st century and aid us in our digital transformation project.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goal was to create a robust MVP that would empower traditional swimming pool maintenance services.

How did you select this vendor?

Vates was recommended to us.

Describe the project in detail.

The swimming pool maintenance service industry has not changed in decades and remains basically the same since the invention of pumps and filters. We wanted to create an intelligent and automated solution to reduce manual labor. Today, pool maintenance is highly labor-intensive. Through intelligent sensors, big data, and real-time analytics, we can reduce trips to people’s homes and automate chlorine doses. With Vates, we created several proofs of concept and an MVP.

What was the team composition?

Vates assigned IoT engineers, an IoT system integrator, digital transformation consultants, and big data engineers.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We accomplished to educate our company’s team and come up with an MVP.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow was excellent. Vates’ team had a great disposition.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their IoT and big data engineers are very experienced and helped us end to end.

Are there any areas for improvement?

They could offer more consulting regarding mobile development.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a digital transformation and marketing consulting group helping clients develop products and marketing strategies that generate revenue quickly.

For what projects/services did your company hire Vates?

We hired Vates to help us with a digital transformation projects for one of our clients. Our client is interested in developing an IoT and real time analytic based product to get a competitive edge in industry. The main goal was to thoroughly educate Onmarc and our client in what can be done with IoT and real time analytics so that the product developed could be successful.

The consulting service lasted about 6 months and included the development of several proof of concepts (PoC). The IoT (PoC) developed included The development of an automated water testing solution with real time analytics. Our client is in the swimming pool industry and is interested in developing a product to help swimming pool cleaning services be more efficient with their job.

The first PoC focused on developing a remote chemical monitoring device to reduce unnecessary trips to the pool owners' houses. This is a mock-up of the prototype of the IoT Real Time Analytics solution. We also developed with VATEs a very detailed customer journey to help us in developing the PoC. Once we developed the dashboard we analyzed creating an application that would be of interest to pool servicing personnel.

We took the proof of concept one more level by making the product connect with the swimming pool filter and pump so that the application developed gave a complete swimming pool maintenance solutions. We analyzed competitor products throughout this consulting service as well. The consulting service included analyzing cognitive functionalities so that the user can talk to the application and receive information via robotic voice technology

What were your goals for this project?

The main goal was to thoroughly educate Onmarc and our client in what can be done with IoT and real time analytics so that the product developed could be successful.

How did you select this vendor?

Referrals

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Vates developed several PoC for us and small prototypes.

What was the team composition?

IoT Engineer, IoT system integrator, IoT Developers Real Time Analytics Engineers Big Data engineers

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

We developed a successful digital transformation project.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Asana, Agile Methodologies, PoC

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their IoT Engineers and System intergrators. Senior IoT team, Senior Big Data Analytics teams, senior IoT developers

Are there any areas for improvement?

Mobile development was fine but their is always room for improvement in mobile developing.